pumpkins and a bike tour

I leave after breakfast, trundling along the gishi - gishi unpaved roads, zipping down the hills, and across the vast swathes of fields.

My Steed

Sometimes I think I'm in a mid-western American state. A house every half a mile. A silo in the distance. But sometimes, when I came to the crest of a hill or a bridge, I am startled by a country of green mountains and endless woodland so that it seems I've landed in the middle of the Black Forest.

I am so alone as I cycle that noises from the bedraggled edges of corn fields scare me into pedalling faster.

You'd be waiting a good long while for this bus

I stop at farmer's markets and viewing platforms. These little stopping stations are full of people, especially families with young children, enjoying the 'famous Niseko cream pie' or sitting on the 'must-sit-on' red tractor or jumping onto the huge bale of hay dumped next to the car park for everyone's enjoyment. The cafes all seem to have a American ranch theme. I sit for a while, confused, watching people stow yet another bag of potatoes away in their car.

A boy enjoys the tractor experience

In an onsen by the ski slopes, I lie with a white napkin wrapped round my head and my head on my arms. The koi carp in the pool next to me slide over each other's backs like eels, so close to me they almost touch my fingers.

I'm not joking about the pumpkins

***

When I return home late, having got myself lost, it's immediately clear my homestay mother has been worrying. "Where did you go? Was it scary? Did you fall off? Did you eat lunch?" I apologise profusely and feel terrible. It gets worse when I reveal that I didn't have lunch - "I should have given you an onigiri! I thought of it as soon as you left!"

The father has won a frozen crab in the golf competition. We open the box together and stare at it. "Wow." "Big, isn't it?" "Yeah." We sit together on the floor around the low living room table. Dinner is pumpkin and homestay mother explains the recipes to me - she explains to me what shoyu is, mirin, sake. She then sits with me for thirty-minutes and helps me with my reading exercises.

I am not sure whether she wants to help me or not. Is she lonely all day in this big house while her husband is at work? Or does she want to do her own things? Does she want to sit and explain kanji to me in the evenings after a glass of wine, or would she really rather be in bed at eight-thirty? I'm reminded of those Victorian women who 'take a companion' in their widowhood...

In any case, I've yet to find out.